Can Star Wars be seen as a “religion”?

Derry’s book of nine chapters consists of nine essays by nine contributors and his introduction.

Professor Ken Derry sits in a bright room on the fourth
floor of UTM’s New North Building. His office—a new spot he recently moved in
to—hosts two large shelves fully stacked with books.

“That pile there, those are books some of my colleagues have written.”
Derry, a Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto, tells me.

One of those colleagues is John C. Lyden, Derry’s co-editor on The Myth Awakens: Canon,
Conservatism, and Fan Reception of Star Wars.

Lyden, a Professor of Liberal Arts at Grand View University, and Derry
are members of the American Academy of Religion. Within the Academy, Lyden,
Derry, and a group of colleagues-turned-friends, are part of a religion and
film group. A little while after a trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens
came out, the team put out a call for papers within the group focused on the
2015 movie and trailer.

“We received three papers, and they were great,” Derry says. “We
received a lot of great feedback within the academy, and we had some people
saying, ‘you should all make a book.’ Based off three papers!”

This call for papers conceptualized the book, which got other essay
writers, religious scholars and eventually a publisher interested. The Myth
Awakens was published in September of 2018. The book’s nine chapters are
comprised of nine essays by nine contributors with an introduction written by
Derry.

The chapters focus on race and gender, music, memory, political context
and how those topics can change how people receive the Star Wars films.

The essays in the book focus on these spaces of Star Wars existence.
One essay “Memory, History, and Forgetting in Star Wars Fandom” explores the
notion of memory in the retelling of stories.

“[The essay] …focuses on the use of memory and the ways in which, if
you want to instruct a canon, you have to do things to the memory—you have to
change things, you have to forget things,” Derry says.

One thread of the study of religion focuses on the question of who
creates religious stories, who tells them, and what people accept as authentic
in religion.

“An example is the Christmas story—the Christmas story that we celebrate
is in fact not the Christmas story that’s in the Bible. It’s sort of a mix of
two stories, but then some parts of those stories are taken out because they
don’t fit. [According to the Bible] Jesus is born in two different places, so
we take one, but have to forget the other. It’s a rejigging of the memory,”
Derry explains.

Across the 40 years of Star Wars’ existence, George Lucas has tweaked
and changed the histories of the Star Wars Universe. In the expanded Universe,
Han Solo and Princess Leia have three children. In the Force Awakens the couple
have one.

“The other two children are completely erased,” Derry says.

“There’s a lot of parallels between how Star Wars has been manipulated
and controlled by creators and owners, and the ways in which religious stories
are played with and manipulated and controlled by sacred leaders and
interpreters and owners. And parallels between how all of this is received,”
Derry says.

People have grasped onto parts of the stories’ history, which has
sparked intense debates drenched in racism, misogyny, and death threats, while
stipulating the authenticity of histories within the Star Wars Universe.

The essays themselves were written in response to fan reception of the
trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fan reception to the trailer was
negative at times.

Negative reception to the film was soaked in racist notions of
conservativism. Some fans clung onto notions of the heroes in Star Wars being
white male figures. When the Force Awakens introduced multiple black
characters, female Jedi’s, and Storm Troopers of colour, the “sacred text” of
many Star Wars fans was dramatically altered.

“There was this hashtag started called #WhiteGenocide. Based on a
trailer, based on the fact that the hero wasn’t a white guy,” Derry says.

Chapter Five of the book, “Racism Awakens,” focuses on these racist
responses to the movie trailer. From a scholarly religious perspective, the
chapter focuses on conservativism, and just how much story tellers can “play”
with “sacred texts” before people get upset.

“So how much flexibility do you have before people get upset? And
that’s what we saw with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you change the focus
from a white blonde guy to a white woman and a black man some people get very
upset. So it allows us to think about those abstract questions [about
religion],” says Derry.

The book is a first of its kind. Derry’s essay is based off the fact
that many people had written about religion and Star Wars, but no religious
scholars had written about this.

“ The Gospel according to Star Wars, The Dharma of Star Wars, The
Evolution of Religious Iconography in Star Wars just to name a few [books about
religion and Star Wars]. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot, but
none of these are written by religious scholars,” Derry says.

“If something is popular or important to people, then that alone makes
it worth studying. This has had such a huge impact on people, then it deserves
some scrutiny.” Derry says. “This is the biggest pop culture phenomenon in the
last 40 years, and we have not talked about it. From a religious perspective,
there’s an advantage of looking at things that aren’t explicitly religious.”

One of these advantages is that lower stakes are involved in critiquing
popular culture over religious texts.

“We kind of see some things that people are doing over here and it’s
similar to things that people are doing over here and we just call it religion.
But religion isn’t a thing. So there’s no more reason to think of Christianity
as “religion” than to think of Star Wars as religion. So depending on the
definition you’re using, Star Wars definitely qualifies as religion.”

“By turning our attention to something people don’t generally consider
as religion—like Star Wars—it allows us to rethink what we mean by religion and
how it functions in our lives. It becomes an interesting way to think about
these issues and ideas in religious studies through this lens of Star Wars.”

As an academic, Professor Ken Derry’s published pieces have considered
religion through the context of other written and visual works such as The
Wizard of Oz, and Netflix series Luke Cage.

His introduction to The Myth Awakens looks at the use of “play” in
Academia.

“Play matters because you take yourself less seriously, you do less
harm. It allows you to put humanity back into Academic study,” Derry says.

“Pop culture is generally looked at dismissively—I think that’s why
there’s a need to do it—because it does matter. So many people consume popular
culture, but it’s looked at as so unimportant in Academia.”

Derry speaks extensively about the notion of conservativism in response
to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer from a religious perspective.

Conservativism in the study of religion focuses on how people cling to
sacred stories and their histories, and Canonism focuses on how we choose the
sacred stories we cling to, and what people consider legitimate aspects of
their religions and sacred texts.

In all of this, people are involved—those who tell the stories, and
those who receive them. In a way, notions of conservativism, legitimacy, and
canon lend significance to certain aspects of stories that may be no truer than
any other story. The storytellers and creators of these histories become gate
keepers in a way, with an authority to write and rewrite narratives that people
base aspects of their lives on. In academia, these notions of conservativism,
and these gatekeepers might dictate what is seen as academically relevant the
same way George Lucas or some Star Wars fans might inform what aspects of the
Star Wars history must remain unchanged and unchallenged.

In studying the parallels between religious study and popular culture,
we are able to tackle larger abstract ideas through more easily digestible
topics.

“What would you want people to take away from this book?” I ask Derry.

“The book was written to be accessible to a lot of people. I hope it
sparks thoughts in people about Star Wars and religion. The essays in the collection,
some of them contradict each other, it isn’t about agreeing. Part of the point
is that you could have different opinions on topics depending how you look at
them,” Derry says.

“For academics—to see that there’s value to studying popular
culture—whether they’re doing it or not, to judge the work by the work itself,
not by the subject matter. Work isn’t important just because it’s about
something ‘important’.”